Gaining the good stuff as I lose the bad.

Getting Back Together

Now that I’m officially off bedrest and cleared for normal living again, I’m doing the best that I can to get myself together and getting as much done as possible. Some days are, as ever, better than others.

I’ve started using Todoist as a task manager and that seems to be helping considerably. On the other hand, I’m not getting as much done as I’d like, although given that I’m still plagued by constant nausea and am still spending hours upon hours at various doctor’s offices, I suppose some progress is better than no progress.

The most effective form of progress that I’m making is in the dog realm. We got the dog into obedience classes and we’re about halfway through them now and she’s making some real progress. She’s the worst dog in the class,not because she can’t do the tricks or is too slow to get it–she’s not, she’s quite clever–but because she’s such a social creature. She just wants to see and play with the other dogs all the time, and that really impairs her ability to learn the tricks. But we’re practicing hard at home and that does seem to be helping.

Another advantage of being able to move around is that I’m also walking them again, which is good for the weight gain (after four months of gaining only 2 pounds, I gained 3 pounds in 1.5 weeks when I was on bedrest) but also good for the dogs. The husband was not doing a great job walking them, although in his defense, he did have a cold much of that time and was also doing a lot of the work and errands that I would normally be doing.

In other terrible pet news, one of the cats had a recurrence of an ongoing kidney issue. Apparently some male cats have this issue, where they form crystals in their urine, which then clog the urethra, making it impossible for them to urinate and eventually resulting in their death if left untreated. In this case, it resulted in a vet bill of 1200, which it goes without saying we could not afford. We borrowed money from my in-laws for it and now we have to pay that back. In addition, he’s now supposed to be on special prescription food that costs about four times as much as what we were spending on food. The rest of the cats are having over the counter urinary tract food, which is about twice as much as we had been spending. In addition, we’ve bought one of those cat fountains which are supposed to encourage cats to drink more. So far, only two of the five cats and the dogs have been seen to drink from it. The cat with the actual urinary tract issue is not one of the cats that are using the fountain, because of course a cat would behave in the most contrary way possible.

For this week–or rather, what remains of it–I’m going to be focused on finishing the winter dresses I started for the girls before the bedrest intervened and getting back to work.